A view with a room

Shangri-La Hotel, The Shard

So then, the much anticipated room. If you do book a night at the Shangri-La, I suggest you ratchet the anticipation up a bit further by arriving after sundown. This will allow you to walk into a room that is plunged into total darkness, giving the full stage to THE VIEW, which is superb and glorious (more on that later).

When you tear your eyes away from the view and examine the room itself, you see that it is quite basic. Everything that’s in there is quite nice, but there isn’t much in there. No matter -- you’ll be spending most of your time in there looking out. As Tom Robbins wrote in his review of the hotel for the Financial Times, this isn’t a room with a view; it’s “a view with a room.”